


The Ballad of Penny Peabody

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-22
Updated: 2008-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She moved to the city from Iowa to go to college.  Her mother didn't want her to go; she had seen that one Pauly Shore movie about the girl who leaves rural America for college and ends up, well, dating Pauly Shore a few too many times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ballad of Penny Peabody

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to kristin and Daluci for beta reading. No thanks to verb tenses for randomly changing.
> 
> Written for CadetDru

 

 

It comes to her like a flash of lightning thirty seconds before she walks on to the stage with him that Captain Hammer is a total and complete waste of time. He's all hair, ass and, er, _hammer_. She always does this too, always goes for the guy who she thinks is going to be her protector, who will look after her. And it's not like she needs looking after right? She works at a homeless shelter with some pretty scary guys sometimes. She realizes that in future she needs to remember doesn't have to be weak to be loved. 

~*~

She moved to the city from Iowa to go to college. Her mother didn't want her to go; she had seen that one Pauly Shore movie about the girl who leaves rural America for college and ends up, well, dating Pauly Shore a few too many times. But Penny wasn't having any of it. 

She worked her fingers to the bone all through high school to get out of that horrible little town and its closed minded citizens. She wanted to see the world, to learn new things, she wanted to help people who had less then she did. There was no way she wasn't going to go to college clear on the other side of the country. In a blue state. With gay people. And foreigners. She had hoped her daddy would get over his objection and see her off, but as she looked over at the bus station one more time from the bus stairs she's disappointed not to see him. 

~*~

As he starts to talk she looks frantically around the stage to see if anyone else notices that what he's saying is just a garbled mess of cliches and phrases cribbed, she's pretty sure, from fortune cookies. And then suddenly he's thanking her and _Oh god_ , did he just say that? She waves politely and tries to think of a way out of this that's the least likely to end with her on the six o'clock news. 

~*~

So off she had gone, to California, the bluest, gayest, foreignest state in the Union. She was pretty sure her mama's prayer group prayed for her immortal soul every time they got together; prayed she wouldn't be seduced by the devil into believing all kinds of socialistic, atheistic ideas like evolution, but Penny didn't care. She was in California and it was going to be awesome. 

Her first boyfriend in college was a junior she met at a dorm party her roommate made her go to. His name was Danny, an environmental studies major who played on the school's very highly ranked baseball team. According to her roommate and all the girls in the bathroom he was a big time catch and she's lucky to have him. He did all the things men are supposed to do, held open the door, picked up the cheque, held her in his arms when she was cold, or the movie was scary. 

But he did other things too. He talked down to her like she was a child, left his laundry for her to do, and flirted shamelessly with every pretty girl who crossed his line of vision, even when she was standing right there. Penny is embarrassed now by how long it took her to see that he was, in the words of her sophomore roommate, a condescending patriarchal tool. She broke up with him the first week of sophomore year. He said some awful, awful things that still make her want to cry, but she didn't give him that satisfaction. Instead, she started sleeping with her roommate. 

~*~

He keeps talking and singing and she decides to make her move. Between the song about heroism and the statue it's unlikely he's going to notice her slip out, probably until after everyone has stopped adoring him, so it seems like a good time to go. She stands up slow, hoping no one will notice the plain girl with red hair stepping cautiously across the dais towards the door. She winces as his song drifts into the just plain weird. God, she hopes he doesn't make a scene.

~*~

It was such a cliche, she thinks to herself, to dump a boy like him and then turn around and start sleeping with a man-hating lesbian who majored in political theory and drama. She said it was so she could become a creator of protest theatre, theatre of the masses like some guy named Augosto something. He's Brazilian, she said. At first Penny thought she was really as radical and progressive as she sounded. They went to a lot of marches together. Penny attended her first Take Back the Night rally and really felt the power of all those women and girls gathered in one place. Heather took her to Pride weekend in San Francisco. They hung out on Castro Street and in the Tenderloin, went to a Michelle Tea reading. Penny shaved her head. She's never felt more free. 

The girls all talked about oppression and liberation, they said they were opposed to gay marriage because they're opposed to all marriage. That it was just another tool of the patriarchy. She wasn't sure she agreed. Heather got angry when Penny identifies herself as bisexual, said it's a way out, a way to avoid having to say you're gay. 

In the end, Penny realized, Heather was just as condescending as John was, even more so. They broke up when they got back to school and Penny let her hair grow out. She still went to Take Back the Night rallies and she still did some volunteer work for NOW and the Campaign for Human Rights, but she quit most of the other groups Heather made her join with her. It's was awkward for one thing, and she wasn't sure they were even what she believed. Instead she starteds focusing more on poverty, homelessness and economic oppression.

~*~

Penny is as suprised as anyone when Dr. Horrible hits Captain Hammer with his time-freezing ray. She wonders why he thought a ray that only froze one person in time was a good idea. She's tempted to run with everybody else, to try and get away from this notorious evil mastermind. But she doesn't. She stays, crouched behind a chair. Maybe she'll be able to help. 

Dr. Horrible does his thing, sings a little tune, threatens everyone with horribleness, and gesticulates wildly with his Death Ray. Penny wonders why he keeps making his tools of evil look like something from the toy aisle at Wal-Mart. She realizes suddenly that he's not actually hurting anyone. She's heard stories of attacks by other members of the Evil League of Evil that resulted in horrible casulties, like Bad Horse's notorious raid on the Kentucky Derby in 2004. But Dr. Horrible hasn't actually done anything besides freeze Captain Hammer in time. She peaks out from behind her chair to get a look at Dr. Horrible and is surprised when she sees Billy standing in front of her boyfriend quietly singing about her.

~*~

The second college boyfriend Penny had was not a baseball player, not a "catch," and never, ever opened the door for her on a date. He approached her at a rally one day and shyly asked if she wanted to go out for a fair-trade coffee with him when they were done. At first she said yes because she felt bad for him, but Charlie proved to be funny, charming and warm. They went on three more dates before he very solemnly asked her to be his official girlfriend. She said yes and for about three weeks they were very happy together. 

And then one day, out of no where, he hit her. She hadn't known what to do. She was a college senior; she spent half her free time volunteering at crisis centers and phone lines for abuse victims. She never expected it to happen to her though. He was sorry afterward, or said he was at least. He blamed it on the rough week he was having with his advisor. Promised he would never do it again. 

Penny was disappointed in herself when she let it slide. Things were good again for another week or so and then he hit her again. This time she didn't let it slide. She pulled back her arm and, with all the force she could muster, hit him back, right in the face. The pain of hitting was almost as great as the pain of being hit. Her fingers met bone the bone of his jaw and slid up, knocking into his teeth. Her fist was bleeding and she was pretty sure she broke a finger, but she stood up for herself. 

~*~

The shock of seeing Billy, sweet, harmless Billy from the laundromat, dressed up and wildly waving his Death Ray around knocks the wind out of her. She watches as he stands in front of Captain Hammer softly singing about her and how he loves her and she thinks of Charlie and Heather and John and darn it she isn't some kind of prize to be won by whoever shows up. She gets suddenly angry and leaps to her feet to yell at him. If he wanted to ask her out, why didn't he just ask her out? 

She's about to open her mouth when the freeze ray fails. Suddenly Captain Hammer is hitting Billy and the Death Ray is flying through the air, as is Billy, there's more singing and threatening and then something happens because she's on the ground again, against the wall and she isn't sure what's going on but it hurts, in her chest, and that can't be good. She's cold, but there's warmth, something liquid on her shirt and she knows what it is but she doesn't want to think about it because that would mean...His face drifts into her line of vision and confirms what she already knows. 

She wants to tell him about her life, and what she thinks about things and how stupid he is, how he doesn't have to be horrible. That she likes what he has to say about corporate tools and changing the world, but maybe not quite to the extent he has in mind. She opens her mouth to tell him but all she can get out is his name, and he looks so scared and broken, so she says the only thing she can think of. "It's okay, Captain Hammer will save me." 

And then it's all fading, the cold spreads, her vision goes dark, it gets quiet. She imagines how it could have been different between them. The long conversations they could have had over bottles of cheap wine. The little apartment they could have bought where they would have meetings of groups to fight for change. He could have been something other than a villain or a hero. She could've been something other than a prize.

 


End file.
